1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the administering of feed additives to livestock, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for supplementing the diets of livestock and poultry with feed additives such as nutrients and medicines supplied in a consumptive fluent carrier such as water.
2. General Discussion of the Background
It has long been a common practice to feed additive supplements to cattle and other livestock, including poultry. Such supplements include vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes, hormones, antibiotics, worm medicines, and other nutritional supplements and medications, which provide a balanced diet, protect the livestock from disease, and stimulate growth.
An early method of feeding additives to livestock involved the use of commercially prepared additive premixes. The additives were premixed together in dry form, with some dry diluting filler material, and then stored at the feedlot for a period of time until ready for use. The premix was either mixed with the feed ration before delivery to the animals or spread on the feed at the feed trough. Premixes suffer the drawbacks of being costly to buy, store and administer. They are difficult to mix evenly with the feed, and additives of different densities tend to segregate in premixes, increasing the chances that specific animals will receive too much or too little of a given additive. Too much of especially toxic additives can have dangerous or even lethal consequences.
Additives also tend to lose their potency in premixes through physical or chemical breakdown, especially if stored for a long period of time under changing environmental conditions in combination with other additives. Therefore, there is no assurance that livestock receive their intended dosages of specific additives when the additives are administered in premixes.
Premixes also limit the choices of additive combinations that livestock feeders can feed their animals to those combinations available commercially. They also limit a feedlot's flexibility to feed different groups of animals different combinations and dosages of additives to meet their differing needs.
Many of the foregoing problems were solved by the methods and apparatus of U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,437,075; 3,498,311; 3,822,056; 3,670,923; and 3,806,001, which are commonly assigned to the owner of the present application. These patents disclose various methods and apparatus for separately dispensing at the feedlot, separately stored livestock feed additive concentrates into a flow of fluent carrier material for dilution, dispersion and suspension, and for transporting the resulting slurry into livestock drinking water or feed rations shortly before the time of intended consumption. Each of these methods and apparatus, however, meter the desired amount of each feed additive on a volumetric basis. Volumetric metering can be inaccurate because of changes in the densities of additive concentrates caused by variations in humidity, particle size, moisture content, flow characteristics, temperature, oil content and other factors. Even minor inaccuracies in the amount of additive concentrates dispensed can cause serious problems, since some of the additives are very potent, toxic drugs. Typically, only 10 to 100 grams of a given additive concentrate are dispersed in a ton of feed. Volumetric metering is only accurate to within 1-2% even under the best of conditions.
Therefore, there is a need for a more accurate method and means for dispensing additive concentrates in systems for delivering additives into feed rations at the feedlot, just before the time of intended consumption of the ration. One potentially more accurate approach is to dispense additive concentrates by weight rather than volume. It is believed that at least one weigh-type additive concentrate delivery system has been tried, but unsuccessfully. It is believed that such system weighed and then dispensed each additive separately and sequentially. It is believed that such system was unsuccessful because it was too slow and too inaccurate for handling additive concentrates in a feedlot environment.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,893,602 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,595,328 disclose machines for weighing batch amounts of aggregate mixtures such as asphalt. Each of these machines uses a scale or strain gauge to measure the amount of bulk material dispensed from a storage container. These systems are only suitable, however, for making the gross kinds of measurements needed in dispensing and mixing bulk materials such as aggregates for making asphalt or concrete, and feed grains for making feeds in commercial feed mills. The weighing components of these machines, for example, are not able to weigh gram amounts of materials as would be required for additive concentrate dispensing in feedlots. Even if they were able to make such fine measurements, their scales would be affected by environmental conditions commonly found at feedlots such as wind and movement of machine components that would adversely affect their accuracy to an unacceptable extent. Finally, these devices would lose accuracy progressively because of a buildup of residue of aggregate particles in their weighing containers during use. They would therefore be unsuitable for dispensing additive concentrates in a feedlot environment.
Accordingly, a primary object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved method and means for dispensing and delivering feed additive concentrates in various combinations and dosages to livestock using primarily weight-controlled rather than volumetric dispensing of additive concentrates.
Another primary object is to provide a new and improved method and apparatus for dispensing and delivering combinations of feed additive concentrates in a liquid slurry to a livestock feed ration at feedlots which is more accurate than prior such methods and apparatus.
Another object is to provide a method and apparatus as aforesaid which can be operated selectively either on a weight or volumetric basis.
Another object is to provide a method and apparatus as aforesaid that can be used effectively in a feedlot environment.
Still another object is to provide such an apparatus and method with an improved control system that can be controlled by a central processing unit that can be quickly and conveniently programmed to meet the varying needs of a given feedlot and different feedlots.
Another object is to provide a method and apparatus that are flexible in enabling the dispensing and weighing of two or more additives either simultaneously or cumulatively, or both, and in enabling the discharge of each weighed additive into a diluting liquid carrier either individually before other additives are weighed or together with other weighed additives.
Finally, it is a specific object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus as aforesaid which can accurately dispense gram amounts of potent microingredient additive concentrates to accuracies within 0.5 grams.